


smiles, tears and a charming dance

by Amaraenta



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Olivia is a mom, Other, implied chrobin but they're not the focus bc i can't marry chrom to anyone else, inigo is sad, son and mom dynamics, this is just angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 02:46:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13940937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amaraenta/pseuds/Amaraenta
Summary: son-mom drabbles describing the end and beginning of olivia and inigo. (not beta'd)





	1. the brightest of smiles

A twirl, a turn, one two three, a mid-jump and a smile for the public once the music ends. The gaze is the most important in a performance, his mother said. The energy and coordination in a performer’s dance means nothing if your expressions betray you. Portraying the emotions of the story in your movements. The joy, the sorrow, the hopes and the pain. This is what made his mother’s dancing so unique and enticing.

“Hope” is the name of this piece. The bards tell the tale of some battle he cannot care for, too focused on her mother’s show. The violins are soft but vibrant, and his mother sways and turns with every crescendo to perfection. Despite the cheers as the show ends, Inigo knows she is not content.

She had not been content since his father’s corpse came back from the frontlines.

His father was one of the first to die amongst his group of friends. Lucina and Morgan lost both of their parents on the same day, one stabbed by the love of his life, the other possessed and doing the stabbing. Then it was Gerome’s father, followed by Nah and later Kjelle. Everyone’s families were slowly being torn in half or erased completely. Tragedy permeated the Halidom and being Shepherds meant standing under the chopping block so others won’t have to.

And despite the pain she was going through, despite crying herself to sleep every night, his mother always tried to smile at him. Even when he was bawling his eyes out, being pessimistic as ever, his mother never flashed him anything but a hopeful smile. 

Her mother was cut down so he could escape from the enemy and died giving him the brightest of smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these are just sad drabbles that take place in different occasions during awakening and they're sad. these were also supposed to be one story but i can't write continuously for my life and i couldn't make it work, so i decided to split em in pieces.


	2. baby boy

Olivia feels the proudest of herself when she holds her baby boy. She was not the best dancer or the best fighter, too shy to strike up a conversation with anyone and much less to make eye contact. And in the blandness of her character, this beautiful creature reached for her hands with joy as if they were a hidden treasure. This was also the moment she realized she had to become stronger, not for herself but for this baby (But there’d be time for that, for now, she had a handsome boy to raise)

Few know it, but Olivia loves singing and so does Inigo by extension. Her voice isn’t the most impressive or trained, but her toddler cannot sleep if she does not sing to him. He does not comprehend the words she is singing, but his eyes crinkle in pure joy when she starts singing to him. He’ll laugh, wiggle and clap excitedly at his mom until sleep claims him, and Olivia will wonder if she should have pursued singing instead of dancing.

Happy little Inigo slowly becomes more like her. Shy, withdrawn, even a tad clumsy. Olivia feels like she’s looking at herself in the mirror when the 4 year old meets the children of the Shepherds (and cries but also squeals when he gets home about how scary but cool Gerome is). To help him overcome his shyness, Olivia starts teaching him how to dance. A little turn here, claps over there, very simple footwork. She also tries to push him to talk to the girls and boys at the palace a little, (“ _I’m sure Gerome and Lucina want to see how cool you are too my little bean!”_ ).

Her plan works out too well, and teenage Inigo slowly becomes too good at charming ladies, so good that it almost never works out, which in turn has him crying for days on end. His dancing improves significantly, but he still refuses to dance in public or on his own. She knows well that the war is starting to affect him as he becomes more anxious, more pessimistic and it tears her inside, so she doubles their dancing training.

He’s a quick learner, light on his feet but not overly graceful. His poise is dainty but sharp, and Olivia might just be the happiest person in the world when he asks her to see him perform in the comfort of their small Feroxi hut.

She has still not taught him the last part of that one song, letting him master every verse and chorus first before getting to the finale.

_Little did Olivia or Inigo know, she would never get to teach him the last part._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all moms can sing and you can't tell me otherwise. even if they're out of tune, it's just a nursery-rhyme level of singing that is comforting to children. olivia can sing, also baby inigo is cute and olivia uses all of the baby talk, you're not taking that away from her, it's her only son.


	3. moon

Inigo loves and hates the moon.

He loves the brightness and calmness it provides, setting the mood perfectly for every rehearsal. He hates that he cannot hide his sorrow from the moon. He has gone over these steps thousands of times in front of her grave, gone over the multiple finales his feet make up. At the end of it, he always breaks. No matter how many times he goes over the steps she taught him, she is not there to accompany him. She does not count the rhythm for him or to hum the tune and she never will again. After all, she is dead.

Dead. Just like his father, just like his comrades’ parents. Just like everyone he has cut down and everyone that he has seen fall in the battlefield.

The moon stares, ever so distant, so silent. He wishes it would have an answer for his suffering but alas, it does not. No matter how much he’ll plead in the nights for peace and normalcy, the moon will remain cold. Nothing will change. The next day he will carry on as if his heart didn’t carry a heavy burden. He will flash a smile to everyone, he’ll flirt with a girl or two after breakfast and he’ll put his life on the line again for a war that is already lost.

He wishes he could hide from the moon as well, that no one would know how much he has cried for his family or his fear of sleeping and seeing her death over and over again.

The moon just stares back at him, what for, he does not know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was going for something here but i don't really know what exactly, but i hope you enjoy it.


	4. alive

When he agreed to joining Lucina in a quest to alter their futures, he did not ask to be stranded in Valm. He hears tales of the Emperor’s exploits at conquering the lands and his aim to rule the world. He already knows how this one is meant to go, the Ylissean forces aided by Regna Ferox and Plegia defeat Walhart and free the Valmese. So all he has to do is wait until they come, all by himself.

In the time he has free, he settles in a village near the Great Gate and carries out occasional jobs as a mercenary. Inigo’s skills are unparalleled with any of the bandits he comes across, and he finds himself enjoying the praise he receives from women every now and then. After all, dancing had done wonders to his fighting technique. Every swing of his sword, every parry and dodge; it was all graceful, natural and truly dangerous.

Eventually he loses track of time, and he only finds out that the Shepherds are in Valm when he meets them on the battlefield himself. He had expected to take out this lot of bandits by himself and get a teacup with a lovely smiling lass afterwards, yet he is shocked out of his plans when he sees Lord Chrom in the flesh charge ahead. He recognizes a few that fight with him, the parents of his friends after all. Sir Frederick looks not a day older than he remembers him (or any less stressed), Minerva looks the same as ever except it’s Cherche riding her and not Gerome. He barely sees Lucina next to a small figure in a tactician cloak (he presumes it’s Morgan) and he feels relief; they made it safely.

His blood is pumping with excitement as he cuts down a few foes, but nothing could have prepared him for the pink-haired blob fighting who cuts down a nearby enemy. _“Are you alright?”_ asks the woman, no, his mother. Her voice is barely audible in the field and yet he immediately freaks out, which in turn freaks her out as well. Okay Inigo, act natural, she doesn’t know you, act natural.

 _“I shouldn’t have shouted, but.. Er, yes. Can we please start over? … Ahem! It was our ravishing beauty that caught me so off guard, milady!”_ Smooth, Inigo, smooth.

“ _I don’t quite know how to reply to that”_ Olivia answers bashfully, turning maybe twenty different shades of red by the minute and staring intently.

 _“Er. Please don’t look at me so… intently. It makes me terribly bashful”_ Inigo finds the perfect opening to run when a nearby enemy comes by, and off in the heat of the battle he goes.

Once the battle is over and the Shepherds reunite, Lord Chrom approaches him. A few congratulations here and there that he cannot care about because he can only think Gods, he’s alive. All of them are alive. And before he knows it, he’s off to find his mother. She looks younger, quieter, but no matter how many dancers his eyes have seen he cannot mistake his mother for anyone else. He is quite nervous but so is she when she realizes he knows who she is. It only takes him to show his deceased mother’s ring to her for everything to come into place and after a quick banter on dancing and Robin chastising them, he is almost crying when he hugs her.

_She is alive. They are alive. There is hope._


	5. hope

Chrom orders that all the childrens’ tents are placed near their parents. As a parent himself, he is aware of the trauma these young kids face. Having to grow up too soon and fight a war that they were not responsible for and see the world end little by little. Lucina and Morgan (the boy more often than his sister) had come often to their tents crying in the middle of the night, and he could only promise that he would not fall this time. They were in this together.

Olivia was no stranger to this either, Inigo was after all a very soft boy. Despite his flirty and carefree attitude, she knew he had bottled and masked his emotions to make it through the next day. His smiles could fool anyone but not her. Actually, he could fool anyone that the planet was square and she would be able to tell he was lying, even though they had only met a couple months ago. Flesh of her own, she supposes.

She has finally gotten him to show her his dancing, after much insistence (and hiding in barrels). In all her years as a dancer, she had never seen someone move with the dexterity he does. She recognizes the tune he hums; she had made that choreography herself. Hope. The finale is different though. She claps excitedly and his eyes well up.

 _“In my future,”_ he stumbles with the words, a knot in his throat _“you were gone before you could teach me the end. I made my own in front of your grave, hoping you’d like it”._

By the time he finishes talking, Olivia has the teen wrapped in her embrace. How has Inigo longed to be in her arms again, even if it’s not really her, even if the Inigo of this timeline will come sometime, she still regards him like his very own son; she is still so proud to be his mother.

Inigo clings to his mother as if she’ll fade again and sobs up a storm. Olivia just quietly hums for him and rubs his back in circles. She doesn’t say anything and just lets him empty his heart to her. He tells her everything. How he hates smiling when he’s hurting so badly, how insecure he is, how afraid he was when the world was about to end and his parents weren’t there to hold his hands, how hopeless he felt. It tugs at Olivia’s heartstrings, but she bears it out for him. His baby needs her now to be strong, to be useful.

Once he calms down, Olivia pulls away and cradles his face in her hands. His bloodshot eyes join her own, and she gives him that proud smile that crushes and soothes his soul.

 _“My boy, you’ve gone through so much without me. You’ve carried this burden for so long”_ She leans up and brushes his hair away to kiss at his forehead and Inigo feels like he’s seven all over again. _“I may not be the mother you left behind, but you’re still my child. You’ve been strong all this while and I’m indescribably proud of you, but please don’t carry this burden anymore.”_

Tears start streaming down Inigo’s face again and he holds Olivia close to him. All his fighting was for this, he held on so long to see her again.

_“We’re together now, and when this is all over, I’ll teach you the end of that song. I promise I’ll live through it all, so you must too.”_

That’s a promise Inigo could uphold. But this time, he’d protect his mother. Inigo was not the child he was when his mother died, so even if things got rough again, he’d protect Olivia and make it until the very end.

At last, Inigo had hope in what the future held in store. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun facts time.   
> did you know that it's implied in the audio cds that brady wrote the Awakening OST to tell their stories?   
> Also, I like to headcanon Inigo picks up his "smiling-through-hardships" habit from Olivia. I presume Olivia dies after her husband and she has to keep Inigo going somehow, because if there's something I've learnt while working as a preschool teacher is that children/teens pick up the emotions of their parents easily, so Olivia is always giving Inigo smiles. I'm soft.
> 
> Anyways, this was a concept I never got around to writing a few years ago and I wrote these because my friend Rox (#1 inigo stan that i know) wanted to suffer. i hope you liked these buddy.


End file.
